Why Most English Teachers Retire Young

The following are a number of analogies, metaphors and similes found in high school student's exam papers. Although I suspect them to be somewhat tweaked, I am delighted to see the existence of a bit of wit in the great unwashed.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, an analogy is a comparison based on a similarity between otherwise dissimilar things or concepts while a metaphor is a comparison made without the use of a grammatical conjunction like as, like or as if. A simile is a comparison made with the use of such words.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience,like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. 
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E.coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m.instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck,either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
23. The ballerina raised gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. 
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. 

Sources: 1, 2 Thanks to MHH

Four Chords from Seven Years Ago and a Difficult Word

Following the blog posts on the life of a riff, this seems like a natural sequel. The badly named Axis of Awesome, Australia's most tolerated musical comedy trio, has pointed out what most musicians have noticed but not entirely thought through. A lot of pop music consist, at least in central segments, of a sequence of just four chords; D, A, Hm and G or a transposed version of these.

Although the trio might not be awesome in the original sense (as explained by Eddie Izzard - see above), they deserve credit for clearly and efficiently stating the point and compiling such a long list of songs, not to mention how they spread hope to lonely, unattractive but clever bachelors with a worn out instrument.

Here is their four chord song:

They could have done worse, wouldn't you say?

Source: 1

Verb song

In lower secondary, my German teacher had us sing "Ich bin Ausländer und spreche nicht gut Deutch" to the tune of "She'll be coming 'round the mountain". A few years ago, me and some friends were in Cologne and after a vicious pub crawl the only German phrase I could remember was this one, which goes to prove you remember things better when you have learnt them in a song. That is why I am proud to present...

The annoyingly infectious...

VERB SONG!

Revision game

Before starting on their preposition handout this week, Sportyclass got to play a revision game I invented during the first sleepless hours of a cold, pre-solistice night.

During the introductory grammar course this fall we touched on word groups such as nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. Before reentering the confusing realm of grammar we had to refresh some of these groups.

Sportyclass is particularly partial to competitions, so I decided to use this form for revision, why not. Building on a game we played in the army, I had the whole class stand on their desks. Then I proclaimed that the whitebord (forward) was nouns, the windows (left) were verbs, the door (right) was adjectives and the back was adverbs.

The idea was for the students to turn towards the word group they thought each of the words I was to pronounce belonged to. I had, beforehand, printed out a number of examples of each word group so I would have the posibility to concentrate on choosing words of appropriate difficulty. If a student turned the wrong way, he or she would have to get down from his or her desk and watch the game from their chairs.

Initially I thought I would need one or two pairs of eyes to help me, but this proved unnecessary since we were in quite a large room (using the height rather than the width of the room). However, I found it necessary to limit the time available for pondering by counting down from a few seconds, further adding to the excitement.

It all went really well. No students fell off their desks, and everyone watched those who were left implicitly registering the word group of each given word. By altering the tense of verbs, the degree of adverbs and adjectives, altering between singular and plural nouns and so on, I also managed to have them repeat the properties of each class, and all in a kinestetic and playful environment.

The students politely asked for grammar revisions. Twice.

Where's Waldo

Everyone knows Waldo, so today I tried a time tested approach to adjectives with Zapperclass with great success. Using a scan from a Where's Waldo book I asked each student to pick a person in the painting and describe it to two of his friends. If any of these picked the right person they got to exercise their descriptive powers next. The conversation went something like this:

Zapperkid 1: Ok, my man is blue. He looks angry and has a saucer in his hand. He is wearing a yellow and black sweater.

Zapperkid 2: Yes, I can see him now it is the third guy on the right, the one beneath the table.

And so, in addition to working with adjectives, they got a small taste of prepositions as well.